VISIO TERTIA, cap. II
Creation's Double Witness
All creatures serve humanity's bodily needs and also bear witness to the soul's salvation, yet those who abuse creation invite God's judgment upon themselves.
And again I heard a voice from heaven speaking to me: "All the creatures God made, in the upper and lower regions alike, he joined to the service of humankind; yet if anyone overturns them through wicked deeds, creation itself brings the judgment of God down on that person with vengeance." Although these creatures assist a person in bodily necessity, they are no less to be understood as looking to the salvation of that person's soul.
The Inner Winds of the Spirit
The eastern and southern winds signify how the fear of the Lord and God's judgment, joined with the virtues, stir the inner spirit to begin good works and persevere toward an eternal reward.
For as you see, the eastern wind and the southern wind, with their companion gusts, by the force of their strength moving the firmament and making it be carried over the earth from east to west, this signifies that the breathing out of the fear of the Lord, and also the breathing out of the judgment of God, along with the other virtues, by the strength of his holiness touching the inner spirit of a person, cause that person — as though beginning good things in the east and, in them, overcoming carnal things all the way to a good consummation, as if toward the west — to live and persevere, because when a person fears God, he dreads incurring God's judgment for his own transgressions. So when a person begins good things in such a way as to persevere in them, he strives for an eternal reward.
Returning Through Tribulation
The western and northern winds represent how chastisement and tribulation shake the weary soul back from decline, urging it to return to the beginning of holiness rather than rest in lukewarm ease.
And there the western wind, and also the northern wind and their companions, receiving it and driving it forward by their own breaths, cast it back under the earth from west to east, because the breathing out of uprightness, by means of infernal punishments and the breathing out of chastisement through bodily tribulations and other scourgings, terrifying the spirit of a person and shaking it with their terrors — when that person, now in the weariness of fatigue, ceases from working good things, declining as it were toward the west — they bring him back, under earthly calamity, to the rising of justice, urging him not to succumb, as if at the end of the works of the just, through lukewarm ease of living, but to return vigorously to the beginning of holiness, because the reward of blessedness will not be given to one who begins and is negligent, but to one who begins and brings the work to completion.✦
A Question About the Solstices
The vision poses a question about what is signified by the southern and northern winds shifting between solstices.
What is signified by the fact that the southern wind, but also the northern, at different solstices of the year, the one rises from the south into the north, the other gradually sinks down from the north into the south?
Read the original Latin
Et iterum vocem de coelo ad me sic dicentem audivi: Omnes creaturas quas Deus tam in superioribus quam in inferioribus fecit, utilitati hominis adjunxit; quas si ille pravis actibus evertit, judicium Dei ipsa cum vindicta super illum inducit. Quae quamvis homini in corporali necessitate assistant, ad salutem quoque animae illius respicere non minus intelligendae sunt. Nam ut vides quod ventus orientalis ventusque australis cum collateralibus suis flatibus fortitudinis suae firmamentum moventes, illud ab oriente usque ad occidentem super terram circumvolvi faciunt, hoc designat quod exspiratio timoris Domini exspiratio quoque judicii Dei, cum caeteris virtutibus fortitudine sanctitatis suae interiorem spiritum hominis tangentes, cum velut in oriente bona incipere, et in his usque ad bonam consummationem, quasi ad occidentem carnalia convincentem, conversari et perseverare faciunt, quoniam cum homo Deum timet, judicium ejus pro excessibus suis incurrere pertimescit. Unde cum sic bona incipit ut in illis perseveret, pro aeterna remuneratione studet. Ibique ventus occidentalis, necnon et ventus septentrionalis ac collaterales ipsorum illud suscipientes, spiraminibusque suis impellentes, ab occidente usque ad orientem sub terra rejiciunt, quoniam exspiratio rectitudinis infernalibus poenis, exspiratione castigationis corporalibus tribulationibus et caeteris flagellationibus spiritum hominis exterrentes, terroribusque suis concutientes, cum jam in taedio lassitudinis bona operari velut ad occidentem declinans desinit, ad ortum justitiae sub terrena calamitate reducunt, illum exhortantes, ne quasi in fine justorum operum tepida facilitate victus succumbat, sed ut strenue ad initium sanctitatis redeat, quia non incipienti et negligenti, sed incipienti et perficienti merces beatitudinis dabitur.
Quid significet quod itidem ventus australis, sed et septentrionalis diversis anni solsticiis, alter ab austro in septentrionem attollat, alter a septentrione in austrum paulatim deprimat.
Scripture echoes
- ↩Matt.5.12 — Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in the heavens; for in this way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
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